It is a Tibetan Buddhist term that refers to a phenomenon where bodies of simple, spiritually disciplined people dissolve into emptiness, usually at death but in rare cases, prior to death. The term derives from the multicolored light display that accompanies the dissolution. The phenomenon is discussed in the book The Illusion of Death and elsewhere on this web-site. It can also be found throughout the internet and in many well written books available at most booksellers.

THE DEATH OF KHENPO A-CHOS

Father Francis Tiso, a Catholic priest, is a central figure in the West’s understanding of the phenomenon. He personally investigated the September, 1998 passing of eighty year old Buddhist Monk Khenpo A-Chos, interviewing eye-witnesses to the event. According to Father, with the monk’s passing his disciples watched in utter amazement as his body became baby pink and wrinkle free. It progressively shrunk in size. After seven days it had completely disappeared, emitting rainbow colored light in the process. This strange death of course reminds us of Jesus’ resurrection, including the part about light.

RAINBOW BODY AND RESURRECTION

Father’s research into the death of A-Chos and other Rainbow Body adepts produced a deep appreciation in him for the role of meditative and ascetic practices in paranormal activity. Still, he draws a sharp distinction between Jesus’ resurrection and Rainbow Body, thus preserving the uniqueness of Jesus’ achievement and its divine underpinnings. The distinction is a red flag to this blogger. Resurrection underscores the need for a relationship with the divine. Rainbow Body emphasizes the mental aspect of spirituality to the exclusion of the divine. The two, resurrection and Rainbow Body, present very different views of reality; one highlighting God’s primacy in creation; the latter the primary role of consciousness. It is an interesting distinction for the mechanics of the body’s dissolution are the same. How can the same result have two very different causes?

JESUS DID NOT BODILY ARISE

First recognize that Jesus did not bodily rise from the dead as is reported in the gospel accounts of His achievement and as is commonly thought by the Sunday morning pew sitter. His body dematerialized into its atomic parts. The dematerialization is proven in Shroud of Turin research, a discovery that has yet to make it to the Sunday morning pulpit. The dissolution took place with a release of energy that produced a flash of light and shook the earth and displaced the entry stone that blocked the entrance to the tomb. The details are in Matthew’s account although one has to look through the written word to find them. The other gospel writers also report the presence of light at the tomb, manifest in the bright, brilliant, dazzling, lightening like clothing some mystery figures inside the tomb were wearing. These other three writers also report that the entry stone to the tomb had been removed but do not say how or why.

The evangelists were not eye witnesses to the resurrection. Their sources were second hand, at best, delivered forty to seventy years after the fact. Apparently the sources told of some type of “explosion” inside the tomb which produced a flash of light and shook the earth with enough strength to dislodge the entry stone. Matthew, God intoxicated and ignorant of what Shroud research would eventually reveal, as were the others, attributed the “explosion” to an angel descending from heaven causing a “great earthquake.” His appearance “was like lightening” he wrote. In his story, the angel himself rolled back the stone. Theologians throughout the ages up to modern times have been caught up in a bodily arising. They bought into Matthew’s account, lock stock and barrel. The story is poorly told in the context of what Shroud research now tells, yet the institution is so heavily invested in bodily arising that it does not seem able to orchestrate change.

THE PRESENCE OF LIGHT

Light is perceived in the human stream of consciousness whenever photons, the units of light, are present. Photons are generated when atomic objects revert from a high energy to low energy state, color being a measure of the extent of reversion. A photon is but a vibration in the earth’s electromagnetic field and it comes about with the release of atomic energy. Thus, resurrection and Rainbow Body are both events taking place at the atomic level. It stands to reason. Bodies cannot vanish unless the things they are made of first vanish. And everything is made of atoms.

THE DUAL NATURE OF MATTER

Investigation of the two phenomena from an atomic perspective brings to mind the dual nature of matter. Matter is either solid, BB or pellet-like, or wave, invisible and vibrating in a vast emptiness. This vast emptiness is best described as the container for the material world. The container can be looked upon as an infinitely large melting pot that contains the things that atoms are made of. Wave becomes particle when a human intends for it to be particle. As strange and outrageous as this may sound, the duality is easily demonstrated in garages and basements in what is known as the double-slit experiment. Matter duality is the true nature of reality. No one knows why. Get over it. Thats just the way it is. Resurrection and Rainbow Body take on new meaning when the word “flesh” is substituted for “particle” and the word “spirit” is substituted for “wave.” The substitution introduces the role of human consciousness into the phenomena, reducing the two to a double-slit experiment conducted on a human scale. The operative words in the last sentence are “human consciousness.” Nothing in the material world, especially the human body, can exist unless a human intends a material existence. Said another way, cessation of intent for something to exist, such as a human body, will cause that something to cease to exist. That is, it will cease existing as the lump it is in the giant container pot and become an invisible vibration therein. As said, no one knows why. It is just the way it is.

SELFLESSNESS-THE INTENT TO NOT BE A SELF

The common thread which connects resurrection with Rainbow Body is the selflessness…the cessation of attention to self….of the owner of the body. Jesus, arguably, was the most selfless person to ever exist, proactively forcing His own death just to prove His teaching that life is eternal; death is an illusion. Rainbow Body adepts achieve selflessness by, through a life time of mental discipline, overriding their senses to accept that the natural state of everything is a wave in the vast container. That is to say, materiality is an aberration in the container, placed there by human intent for materiality. Bottom line: the human body exists only because the owner intends for it to exist. That intent, called selfishness, is commonly expressed in many different ways and they all relate to survival and the pursuit of pleasure, comfort and security.

THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY

The point being made is this. The popular view that resurrection is a divinely orchestrated event and different from Rainbow Body distorts the view of the true nature of reality and what it means to be human. The human body is an illusion although, as Albert Einstein once said, a persistent one. It is real only to the extent that the owner, through selfish behavior, makes it real. Everything in the material world is a derivative of consciousness, something another great thinker, Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, told us long ago.

The words of the Bible, “To dust thou shalt return” need to be appended with the words, “but only if you so intend.”

As Christendom’s most holy relic, it is indeed a mystery; a mystery made complex by the many varying opinions as to how the image of a crucified man came to be deposited on the cloth. The faithful say the image is that of Jesus and accept the cloth as validation of His resurrection from the dead. Skeptics say it is a forgery, the work of a cunning medieval artist. Both are wrong. It is the actual burial cloth of Jesus but it doesn’t validate resurrection. It denies it.

Skeptics challenge authenticity primarily on the premise that radiocarbon dating tests conducted in 1988 aged the cloth to 1260-1390 AD, indicating it was a forgery. Supporters reject the carbon dating results, arguing, among other things, that the testers sampling procedures were flawed. Except for a few forward thinkers, a very important point has fallen under the radar screen. A linen cloth that has been exposed to atomic radiation cannot be accurately carbon dated. It will always date younger than it actually is. And, that is exactly what happened to the cloth. It was exposed to atomic radiation. Jesus’ body vanished by dematerializing into its atomic parts.

There is much evidence in support of radiation theory and it will not be covered here. A good summary can be found in The Illusion of Death, the Shroud’s web site at shroud.com and several well written books.

The commonly accepted version of Jesus’s so-called resurrection is shaped by the four gospels. The Greek word the gospel writers used for resurrection is egerthe. It means to awaken, to arise and is used throughout the New Testament. Lazarus “egerthed” when Jesus raised him from the dead and he walked out of his tomb wrapped in burial cloths. Peter’s mother-in-law “egerthed” when Jesus cured her of her sickness and she got up out of bed and went about her business. You “egerthed” when you awoke this morning and went from horizontal in your bed to vertical on the floor. But, here is the issue. Jesus didn’t egerthe; His body vanished in a shower of atomic radiation.

The implication between “egerthe” versus “radiation” is huge. The former embeds the notion of direct, life restoring, divine involvement in human affairs. It leads to the Christian Doctrine of Resurrection wherein the bodies of everyone, saint and sinner alike,” will, like Jesus, “egerthe, ” only at some nebulous point in history called the end of time. If Jesus didn’t “egerthe” then neither will the rest of humanity when the time comes. Radiation, on the other hand, reflects the interaction of human consciousness with matter. The continued perpetration of a mistake rooted Doctrine of Resurrection denies the power of human consciousness and results in a tragic misunderstanding of what it means to be human. The flawed doctrine is at the heart of many of the societal problems we face today.

The driving force behind so-called resurrection is selflessness, the cessation of attention to self. We also find it at work in the Eastern mystical death traditions (for example, Rainbow Body, addressed elsewhere on this web site). As preposterous as it seems, when one ceases paying attention to self, the body vanishes. Cessation of attention to self is a near impossible task except for a select few for it requires denial of one’s biological design. We are built to survive. Attention to self takes many forms and they all center around pursuit of pleasure, comfort and security. Jesus, arguably, was the most selfless person to ever exist, proactively forfeiting His life just to prove His teaching; life is eternal, death is an illusion.

Bodies vanishing into nothingness because of withdrawal of intent is a difficult thing to accept although it is well known and scientifically proven that atomic sized matter cannot exist in material form unless a human intends for it to exist in material form. This of course points to the well known double-slit experiment where duality of matter, wave versus particle, is conclusively demonstrated. Somehow we forget that in order for a human body to vanish the things of which the human body is made must first vanish. In this forgetfulness the once loud voices of some of the greatest thinkers in human history become a faint whisper. Einstein, Planck and other Nobel Prize winners told us years ago that reality is but an illusion, that matter is a derivative of consciousness, that the things things are made of cannot be regarded as real, they are just a thought.

So, what does it all mean? When you put all of the evidence and observations in a bag and shake it up, that which emerges is a startling different view of reality. What has become known as resurrection and Rainbow Body are but demonstration of the duality of matter on a human scale. If a body can be made to vanish whenever the owner ceases paying attention to it, then it logically follows that paying attention to it is the increment of activity that causes it to exist in the first place. In other words, we are all here in body because we intend to be here. A person’s essence is not a soul. It is an agency with reasoning and computational skills that include the ability to intend. This agency is mind. The body is the product of that intent. It is a mistake to speak of the mind as something someone owns, as in, for example, “he has lost his mind.” Ownership implies a higher power that is superior to mind because it owns it. This is a mistake. Mind is all there is. The body is self organized into form; a proxy for the human mind.

In that context, life is but a giant video game. Your body is the avatar you created in order to play the game. When it succumbs to the forces of nature, in the interlude called death and afterlife, a temporary time out so to speak, you take stock of how you performed in the game, then create a new avatar and do it all over again. As a guy name Bill once said, “All the world’s a stage and the men and women merely players.” And, he was correct in his assessment.

Far from being a religious relic, the Shroud of Turin speaks volumes to the nature of reality and what it means to be human.

Everything is made of atoms. They are difficult to describe with words as no one has ever seen an atom with their eyes. Their existence is inferred. The best one can do is offer a description that stirs the imagination.

One description has electrons circling a mother nucleus much like a satellite whirls around mother earth. If this complex were expanded such that the nucleus was the size of a basketball, the electron’s orbit would take it twenty miles away. In other words, the atom is 99.999% “empty space.” But, the words “empty space” need to be placed in quotation marks because “empty space” is not really empty. It is a strange kind of energy that no one fully understands. Many religions know of it and label it in various ways: Tao, Brahma, Dharmakaya and Kingdom of God. “Empty space” is absolute. It depends on nothing else for its existence yet everything material depends on it for existence. It is the mother womb of the cosmos.

The atom can also be looked upon as compacted, bunched-up, “empty space.” That is, specific locations in space and time where “empty space” is extremely dense. While we like to think of material objects as solid, in truth, they are not. Matter is simply dense energy, i.e. compacted “empty space.” Emptiness is the natural state of everything; matter is a disturbance in “empty space.”

ATOMS ARE WHERE CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE PHENOMENAL COLLIDE

Human intent for material existence causes “empty space” to bunch-up. In other words, the atom is a mental state. The world has known of this strange relationship between mind and matter since the early 1800’s, thanks to the now famous Thomas Young Double-Slit experiment. Recent work by Dr. Dean Radin (Institute of Noetic Sciences) confirms the power human intent has over elemental atomic particles. His work echoes what the fathers of quantum theory (Albert Einstein, Max Planck and others) told us sixty years ago; reality is an illusion. The things that things are made of are not real; they are a thought. Fact is, human consciousness is an active participant in creating reality. And, as preposterous as it may seem, your body is just a thought.

In the corollary, the withdrawal of intent for materiality causes “empty space” to revert to its natural state of pure, undisturbed emptiness. This then is the underpinning of Rainbow Body and so-called Resurrection. They reflect the intent of the owner of the body to not be in body, i.e. not be a self, i.e. to be selfless. Selflessness is a virtue that all rainbow body adepts demonstrate, particularly Jesus. Arguably He was the most selfless person to ever exist, willingly forfeiting His life, punctuating His demise in the most painful way known to man, just to prove that death is an illusion.

It is a fourteen foot by five foot ancient linen cloth that bears the image of a prone, naked, crucified man. The image is most certainly that of Jesus although die-hard skeptics adamantly reject that conclusion. The man’s wounds are consistent with the biblical accounts of Jesus’s death ordeal; flogging, crown of thorns, nail holes in wrists and feet and spear jab in the right side. Additionally, the head and upper back wounds closely correlate with a second Jesus burial cloth. This cloth, known as the Sudarium of Oviedo (it is housed in Oviedo, Spain), was wrapped around His head to prevent spillage of blood and lymph fluids prior to removal from the cross. The Sudarium is the cloth “that had covered his head” which is referred to in John’s gospel.

IT CAN’T BE CARBON DATED

The denial of the authenticity is based primarily on the results of a 1988 radiocarbon dating test which dated the cloth to 1260-1390, indicating it couldn’t possibly be Jesus’s. Supporters of authenticity argue against the test citing sloppy sampling methods, violation of protocol and suspicion in general. In the spirited debate, a critical piece of information has gone unnoticed. A linen cloth that has been exposed to atomic radiation cannot be accurately carbon dated. It will always date younger than it really is. Thus, the carbon dating debacle doesn’t deny the authenticity of the cloth. It confirms that the body it once enshrouded vanished in a flux of atomic radiation, similar to the Rainbow Body effect that is found in the Buddhist tradition. It should be noted that the Sudarium, which would also have been exposed to radiation as would everything else in the tomb, dates to 700 A.D. even though it is widely accepted as a first century relic.

IMAGE FORMATION

The image on the cloth is the result of accelerated aging of the image area compared to the non-image area. Something of an atomic nature bombarded the substrate of the cloth, breaking the normally stable carbon to carbon bonds, making them more reactive and susceptible to aging. The radiation effect was so powerful that the image of a Roman coin placed over Jesus’s right eye can be seen using high resolution photography. It is a 29 A.D. minting of a Pontius Pilate coin.

THERE WAS NO BODILY RESURRECTION

There are numerous other tests to confirm that Jesus’s body radiated away. One can find them at the Shroud web site, shroud.com, or read The Illusion of Death for a good summary. The point is, Jesus did not bodily rise from the dead. His body dematerialized into its atomic parts. It is interesting to note that the Shroud, long thought of as a relic that validates Jesus’s resurrection, actually denies it. Only thing is, the people who matter are unable to see the truth it reveals.